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Whether or not the government should become involved in the education market is a hotly contested topic. The strategy used to address this issue in the US is centered on striking a balance between public and private involvement in education.

Arguments

• Pro: Could make education more egalitarian (either through selection through intelligence or through subsidies for poor students)

• More people go if it is subsidized -->

  • Pro: Better protection against automation, more science

  • Pro: Humans are monkeys at heart and needed careful training to not be feral

  • Con: Forces people who don't want to go to university to go to university to get standard jobs because decreased cost means more people go

    • Rebuttal: A lot of those standard jobs require or could heavily benefit from what people learn in university.

    • Counterargument: The cost of getting an unnecessary degree is still high because of the effort and time spent.

Summary

• Subsidies allow everyone to go.

• Going to university helps people be better. (Most convincing Pro argument)

• We need lots of people to go because the jobs that university goers do are more complex and thus AI will have more trouble doing them, meaning most humans will stay useful for longer.

• The more people go the more scientific progress we'll have.

• If lots of people go, employers will start to require degrees meaning even people who hate the idea are forced into going to get those jobs because degrees are correlated with traits like conscientiousness and conformity which are difficult to measure directly. (Most convincing Con argument)

Crucial Question: Do the benefits of improved conformity to society and conscientiousness that university teaches people outweigh the negatives of people wasting time and energy getting unnecessary degrees? Could those traits be learned just as well in the workplace?

I see no evidence was provided to suggest that the skills taught in university are any more valuable than those taught in the workplace or vocational training.

That said, for certain professions, university is the vocational training (eg. for scientists). And these fields would certainly benefit from progression faster and being more egalitarian. Thus, my conclusion is that the government should subsidize university for fields where it represents effective vocational training such as science and perhaps other professions, while not subsidizing or providing education for other fields where time doing degrees could be better spent learning vocationally in the workplace. Thus, despite the counterarguments, I am resolving this market to YES.

Hope everyone enjoyed. 😂

is this only about higher education? the US government is arguably much more involved in the K-12 education sector (to the extent that calling it the K-12 "market" struck me as odd!)

@a yes

@a anyway, I'm betting YES — I think that even if the government should be less involved with higher education, some involvement will still be a net positive. Community colleges, for example, seem like a pretty great institution, and they're run by the government.

@a The sector is also more important according to @bingeworthy, see here. We could discuss whether they need to be involved there, too, and I would bet YES there, too.

@b575 (Although, for consistency, see here: the way money is spent is important.)

Subsidizing more education also means, rather obviously, that ones who have the skills for a scientific or otherwise demanding-higher-education job (have I mentioned I am absolutely shocked that US doctors do not actually study medicine through most of their universities? In Russia and, afaik, in most of Europe you do study that and then go to residence/ordinatura/whatever the local term is) but don't come from rich families have higher chances to actually get into those professions.

Of course, this runs into the problem of a number of such markets being currently oversaturated by people - but if we take seriously the idea of "people should be able to pursue what they want and what they're best in" this shouldn't be a major consideration. Even if the total number of, say, scientific jobs remains constant less than the number of people with the relevant education and even if we ignore the fact that the possibility of someone with higher education doing science as a side gig while working somewhere else is higher than if they had no such education (WHICH WE ABSOLUTELY SHOULDN'T, this is how a lot of science is done), not subsidizing means that the constant number of jobs is taken by people from richer families rather than by more skillful ones (these are correlated, of course, but far from R=1 correlated). If you care about scientific outputs of the society (which you should, I hopefully shouldn't write up why?), this is an important consideration.

@b575 Yes, I agree that subsidizing education is more egalitarian. How do you deal with the problem of credential inflation where when education is subsidized, employers can just ignore applicants without degrees, meaning that everyone has to get a degree if they don't want to?

@ZZZZZZ Define "everyone". There are works which will virtually never do this - cleaning up streets, making fast food, and stuff. There are works which will require degrees because they, y'know, actually require the knowledge and this is the most straightforward way of checking. And then there are works like secretary where you technically don't need this but the employer wouldn't lose much by requiring. I'd like to point out that the last ones are the minority, and an eaten-away for independent reasons (somehow, AI seems to best automate those, not the bottom-most or the topmost) minority at that.

@ZZZZZZ (And yes, office jobs where you deal with spreadsheets and presentations are very much university-level jobs. Requiring a degree for most of those is, imo, simply correct - i.e. they fall in the second category above, not the third. Especially given how much of a disaster many schools are in US.)

@ZZZZZZ how do you deal with credential inflation when education isn’t subsidized? Seems to me employers and students still have the same incentives whether it is subsidized or not. The only difference I see would be if it was subsidized then whether you’re able to get that degree you don’t really need would be more correlated with willingness to put in effort rather than parents income level.

@bluerat Sure, but it will mean less people are able to get degrees but I think the income gap is a real problem. Perhaps the original public university system where only the most intelligent students went to university was the best. The point is to not make it a requirement for too many jobs where it is not really necessary.

@ZZZZZZ only the most intelligent students going to university only works when there are plenty of unskilled jobs available for the rest. with automation and outsourcing that becomes less of an option each year, in 1950 about 5% of americans got a college degree, while 12% farmed and 30% had a job in manufacturing, now about 40% of americans get a college degree while 1.2% farm (note: agriculture is still a pretty big field, but from what i can tell it's more agricultural engineering and less actual farming) and 10% have a job in manufacturing, I'm sure i could find the unskilled jobs the last 4% came from with some more searching as farming and manufacturing were just the first (and only) two fields I looked at. if we reduce the amount of people who (are allowed to) go to college where will those people go now? where will they go in another few years when self driving cars automate transportation and another 10% of Americans have to find a new unskilled job? people aren't being pushed into college because of jobs requiring degrees when they aren't needed, they are being pushed into college because of jobs requiring degrees.

Had to spend some time hunting it because of a slightly unexpected name but this post by Scott Alexander (who's much more skeptical about higher education than I am) is highly relevant to the AI statement above.

@b575 thanks for info

@TerolaSurik As I embarked on a quest for academic support, the stars aligned to guide me to a website residency personal statement that shimmered with the promise of intellectual illumination. It was a virtual oasis, where the fusion of meticulous research, eloquent prose, and profound insights harmoniously converged. Within the hallowed halls of this digital sanctuary, my essays were not merely words on a page but vessels of intellectual exploration, poised to engage and captivate readers with their thought-provoking content and impeccable craftsmanship.

Universities are currently over-reliant on grants, both in education and in scientific inquiry. This is bad - especially for theoretical science but also for budgets as a whole. And government spending more money on it would probably resolve that.

@b575 I'm not sure this is really the education market. It seems more like the market for research which is a separate thing. Of course, it's a source of income for universities either way.

@ZZZZZZ Well, in US, as far as I know, there are virtually zero research labs that are not under universities or big companies (the latter with their conflicts of interests - in more than one sense - are their own can of worms), and it's not like there is some kind of big wall between a university's education budget and its research budget. These are often done by same people, in particular: Dr. Preminger leaving academia, for instance, means both that he doesn't publish his articles with the university AND that he doesn't teach a syntax course in that university. But OK, I also have different arguments...

This market relates to whether they should be more involved or whether they should leave the market mostly privatized.

@ZZZZZZ I would add that to the title and description. Without this comment, I'd interpret it as literally any involvement at all (even if it was just enforcing laws in cases like scams)